


Icarus And Psyche

by Leyenn



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Episode Related, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-17
Updated: 2009-11-17
Packaged: 2017-10-03 05:59:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leyenn/pseuds/Leyenn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An unorthodox counselling session.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Icarus And Psyche

**Author's Note:**

> Post-ep for _The Icarus Factor_.

It was dark outside her window as Deanna Troi padded out of bed, dressed in nothing but a long white shift that floated to her ankles as she moved through into the main room of her cabin, brushing her loose hair back with one hand. Of course, the darkness outside was almost a given unless the ship happened to be in close orbit somewhere, but still it brought to the planet-bred mind the immediate thought of night-time, no matter how long you'd had to accustom yourself to its presence. The fact that it was nearly one in the morning by her chrono also added to the sensation, and likewise to the craving for some chocolate to stave off what seemed to be becoming a chronic case of insomnia.

She knew why she couldn't sleep, of course. She could feel him standing outside her door, waiting. Not for her - he knew her code as well as his own, if he needed to come in that badly - but for his own indecision to fall one way or the other; to bring him inside or take him back the dozen steps to behind the wall that usually separated them this late at night. She considered moving to the door, calling his bluff and opening the lock to see what he would say, when she found him lurking in the corridor outside her quarters in the middle of the night shift... but then, he knew she would be awake, probably knew she would do that if he waited too long. Which was precisely why she wasn't going to force matters, and precisely why she placed her midnight snack above Will Riker's restless legs right now.

The door slid open - did she imagine it, or was it quieter at night? His voice certainly was, although the corridor beyond would be hours empty of other people. "Mind if I come in?"

She flashed him a warm smile, not even bothering to be surprised at his appearance, and gestured with one hand at the couch behind her. "Of course not. Would you like a drink?"

He smiled back gratefully, making his way to the couch with some obvious relief. "Surprise me."

She chuckled quietly, removed the steaming hot chocolate from the replicator slot and keyed another long-practiced request into the console. When she turned back to sit down she handed him a clear spirit glass: he swirled the blue liquid speculatively, taking a tentative sniff before flashing her a bemused glance over the rim. "Betazoid brandy?"

She smiled from behind the coffee glass cupped between her palms. "Surprise."

"It's been a while." He examined the liquid once more and then took an experimental mouthful to test its potency. He seemed to approve, although he couldn't resist teasing her. "Not quite as good as the real thing..." Troi rolled her eyes from behind her own drink.

"I'm afraid the first officer confiscated my supply. Something about quarantine regulations?"

"Ah." He grinned good-naturedly and eyed his glass again. "Well, in that case, I guess I can survive."

"You want to talk." She didn't insult him by making it a question, deliberately reaching inside herself to 'switch off' her analytical, counselling mind. It would be a mistake, always, to attempt to counsel Will Riker the way she would any other member of the crew, particularly at one in the morning. Because Will Riker was not, in any way, just another member of the crew. Especially not to her.

"I couldn't just come to enjoy your fine taste in brandy?"

Troi raised her eyebrows. She didn't even bother to mention the absurdity of his coming over at one in the morning for a replicated nightcap. "If that was all you wanted you'd be in your own quarters with the real thing. So talk, imzadi."

He sighed, although she spotted a rueful surrender in his eyes for just a moment when she invoked that most intense of privacies between them. But she knew him - she knew what he was here to say, what he wanted to talk about, and he wasn't about to open up for anything less.

"What did you think of him?" Seeing the thoughtful look on her face, he added, "Honest truth. I didn't come here for counselling."

To anyone else, the question would have seemed sudden, out of the blue, but Deanna had been waiting for it for hours now. She frowned, then allowed herself a low sigh. "My honest opinion?" At his nod she sat back into the chair and wrapped her arms around herself, taking another sip of chocolate. "I didn't like him. I didn't like who you were when you were with him."

He raised his eyebrows, unsure how to take that. "Well, they do say fate will eventually turn us all into our parents, no matter how we try to avoid it."

She winced. "Gods, I hope not."

Riker grinned wryly. "I admit the idea doesn't exactly fill me with joy, either."

"You came close to it today, Will."

His amusement faded almost instantly. "Too close." He took an angry gulp of the brandy, his emotions so strong in her mind she could almost feel it burn down his throat. "Promise next time you'll just kill me before it goes that far?"

Amusement flickered across her lips, but she raised her eyebrows in a challenge he would allow only her to get away with. "Rather me than your father, is that it?"

He gave her a roguish smile, the way he always did when he was trying to get away with something. "Rather you than anyone, Counselor."

She ignored the barb in her title, finishing the sentence for him. "And rather anyone than your father."

"He doesn't feel like my father!" His glass made a sharp 'clink' against the coffee table as he thrust himself out of the couch, his body finally giving way to the restlessness of those emotions she had felt in him for days now. "Everyone on board knows him but me, Deanna. Watching him in Ten Forward... it was like Jesus healing the masses. The perfect Kyle Riker," he put on an overly arrogant tone, pacing back on himself to look down to her still sitting there in her nightgown, unsettlingly calm in her chair. "Great career, friends with half of Starfleet, a woman in every port..."

"Sounds familiar." She took a sip of hot chocolate to hide from the glare he shot her. "If you didn't want the truth, Will, you should have told me. I have to be prepared if I'm supposed to lie convincingly." He held her gaze a moment longer - a long moment longer - at such an outrageous statement, then finally looked away with a frustrated sigh and raked a hand back through his hair.

"He was just so goddamn _likeable_, Deanna. Everybody's friend, all smiles and charm-"

"And that's not how he was with you."

He stared at her - trying to work out how she could take such a simple, horrendously obvious statement and turn it into the revelation that just spilled out everything that crowded into his jumbled mind. He had an unsettling feeling that it had a lot less to do with the words than it did the kind of trick a well-mannered Betazoid like Deanna wasn't supposed to try, but he purposefully ignored it. Given how difficult he'd been for her over the years, she was entitled to keep some secrets up her sleeve.

"That's _never_ been how he is with me." Pacing again, he stopped unconsciously between her chair and the window, gazing out at the stars streaking past. "Fifteen years, Deanna. And he wants to just forget it all. Be 'family' again, like nothing ever happened." He shook his head helplessly, staring fixedly out into the cold of space beyond her window. "Am I really supposed to be able to do that?"

There was a heavy pause, as if she were considering her answer; the only sound in the room was a quiet chink as her glass was placed next to his. Then her hand rested gently on his back, and a moment later he felt her press close to his side, following his gaze out into the blackness. She felt warmer than usual through the thin shift she was wearing; he'd barely even noticed it until now, as her bare arm snaked around his waist. "Truthfully?"

He looked down at her. "Yes."

She rubbed her palm gently between his shoulders and laid her cheek against his upper arm. "I couldn't."

He felt his shoulders drop, his muscles unconsciously relaxing under her hands; he hadn't even realised how tense he'd been until she said that. How tense he'd been for days now, ever since he'd stepped into that transporter room and gotten his worst surprise in years. He was insanely reminded, in total opposition to what he'd felt then, of the instant he'd stepped out from behind Jean-Luc Picard's shoulder to find Deanna standing there in front of him. A ghost from the past, or so he'd thought - but a welcome one. He hadn't realised how much he'd missed her until he knew he could reach out and touch her, feel that she was real the way he could feel her against him now. Nothing at all like this past week: not being able to turn around without another confrontation, another pitiful attempt at reconciliation with too much need and not enough understanding on either side. And now the total confusion of knowing that they were so different, but so similar - a knowledge he still wasn't even the slightest inch comfortable with - and actually having believed, for an instant that afternoon, that a single 'I love you, son' that was decades overdue could be enough to sort out the mass of conflicting emotions in his head.

"You know, he was so sure that you'd take this mission." Troi's voice was quiet, as if she were thinking aloud. He frowned in surprise.

"You talked to him about me?"

"Only briefly. In a purely professional capacity." She looked up in time to see the look that flickered through his eyes and gave him an incredulous stare. "You're suggesting I would have told him about us?"

"I don't know. I didn't really consider it." He sounded thoughtful. "I'm not sure it's any of his damn business."

"I think I like it better that way." His frown deepened, closer to concern this time, and she wondered why it surprised her that he would side with her rather than Kyle Riker at even the merest hint of a problem. "To be honest, Will, I don't think _he_ liked _me_."

He actually scowled then, although she could clearly feel that it was directed light years away from her. "Why the hell not?"

"Will." She smiled reassuringly and moved to face him, unconsciously framing herself against the darkness outside as she laid a placating hand on his arm. "Not every Human is comfortable with someone who can see behind their walls, much less someone trained and employed to do just that. I've put up with my share of that distrust, believe me. In your father's case, at least the fear is somewhat justified."

He looked sceptical, and definitely still angry, although she could feel him already trying to control it. He still remembered fragments of what she had taught him, even after this long, and it was one of his most endearing qualities that he tried to guard himself like that around her, to tone down the mental pressure he knew such fierce emotion could produce. She found it suddenly ironic that he could be so much better at it out of simple concern for her, where Kyle's distrust had scrabbled up only the most rudimentary of barriers - that of intense, overriding emotion - against her mind.

Riker was looking at her in confusion now. "If this was a purely professional encounter...?" He raised his eyebrows in question. Troi shrugged.

"I went no deeper than I would with any of my patients. But it's very hard not to read someone when they are, as the saying goes, thinking constantly of the camel's left kneecap."

He snorted with sudden amusement at the image that presented. "You're saying he was that afraid of what you might see, he just mentally," he waved his hand, "poured it all out?" She nodded sincerely.

"It's a common trait in people who are distrustful of telepaths. Which, by the way, I could distinctly tell he thought I was."

"And you didn't enlighten him?"

Her smile was innocent. "No, I didn't. How remiss of me."

He actually laughed then, for the first time in days, flashing her that grin that took seven years off him and made his eyes sparkle the way they always had. She smiled along with him and tapped a playful finger on his lips.

"Now, if your father could get you to do that, maybe you could both start to make some progress."

He shrugged. "It's been fifteen years, Dea. You know me better than he does."

"I know you better than anyone." It was simple fact, and she treated it as such. He smiled; and, much to her sudden and pleasant surprise, pulled her around into his arms and hugged her tightly to him.

"You know, you're more family to me than anyone I know?"

She brushed back that errant lock of hair that always fell out of place on his forehead and traced her fingertips down his cheek, a fond smile in her eyes as she looked at him. "Will, what we have - what we'll always have, no matter what... it goes beyond family."

He arched his eyebrows in mock challenge. "Even yours?"

Troi rolled her eyes playfully; she knew better than to be drawn by Will Riker. "Perhaps."

He let that pass, but he couldn't resist teasing her just a little. "You know, we're pretty much even now."

She raised her eyebrows. "'Even'?"

"Your mother wasn't overly enamoured with me when we talked about you, as I recall."

"Well, given what you'd been doing for three days before that-"

"What _I_ was doing?!" His arms were still around her waist, her hands resting lightly on his shoulders, and he took advantage of the closeness to send a wave of decidedly erotic memories into her mind. "I don't remember you giving me a whole lot of choice in the matter."

She smiled softly. "There are always choices, Will."

He allowed that, but still. "And did I make the right one?"

He suddenly felt very much closer than she'd noticed before, and that sudden vulnerability echoed clearly in her mind. Indecision wasn't in Will Riker's nature, but she knew him well enough to see its rare appearance where another wouldn't. Another such as Kyle Riker, for example. "Then, or today?"

He sighed, but the smile he gave her was affectionate. "I knew I could count on you for that."

"Today." She cocked her head, curious. "Why are you still here, Will?"

He looked straight into her eyes, then; his reply was quiet in the dark room, and gentler and more sincere than she had heard from him in a long while.

"You know why."

She stared at him in astonishment. When she spoke, her voice was hushed and she sounded stunned. "You're actually serious."

"I'm not asking. Not yet... maybe not ever." He ran a hand tenderly over her hair and smiled hopefully. "But I couldn't say goodbye, Deanna. Not yet. Being here, on the _Enterprise_, it feels more like family than my own father. Maybe I'm just not ready to give that up."

"'Motivated self-interest'?" she teased. He chuckled, twirling a curl of dark hair absently around one finger.

"I don't know... I'm starting to revise that idea."

"Will." The tone of her voice was a reprimand in itself, a warning of the boundaries set between them; boundaries that felt oddly hazy this late at night, standing in each others' arms with only hours since she had imagined he might be leaving her again. "We had an agreement..."

"And if I had taken the assignment on the _Aries_?" He touched her face and brought her head up, intense blue eyes searching hers. "Could you still have let us end that way? With no regrets?"

She swallowed, holding her voice steady by only a thin thread as he caught her in that honest gaze. "There are always regrets, imzadi."

"And there are always choices?" His mouth was less than an inch from hers now, so close she could feel the warmth of his skin brushing hers, the heat in his eyes that she hadn't seen there for a long while now. That maybe, she hadn't let herself see until it was almost too late.

"Yes." She melted into him, pressed her lips to his and wound her arms around his neck to pull his head down. "Always."

And then there was the amazing, dizzying intensity of emotion that she had always felt with him as the kiss deepened, reflected back and back forever between them... but still, something niggled at the edge of her senses, a mutter of distraction read from a corner of his mind.

She blinked. "Will?"

He tried - why, she didn't know - not to look uncomfortable. Although he did have the good grace not to try pretending there was nothing else bothering him. "This... discussion. With my father."

Deanna lifted an eyebrow, levelling her voice to just a touch of amusement. "Yes?"

"Really, purely professional? You weren't even curious?"

She leaned back into the broad span of his hands on her back and smiled mischievously. "All right, I admit, a little. You've never said a lot about your father, and I wanted to make sure you weren't playing the Icarus to his fatherly advice."

He chuckled at the seemingly elaborate metaphor. "'Icarus'?"

She smiled. "Icarus, in your ancient mythology, ignored his father and let his own blind ambition rule his decisions, despite his father's attempts to reach out to him. That same ambition was ultimately what got him killed."

Riker grinned and pulled her closer. "Ah, but Icarus, that I remember, was never blessed with his very own Psyche to keep that dreaded ambition in check."

"Psyche wasn't entirely stable herself," she retorted. He chuckled.

"You're digging yourself into a hole, Counselor."

"Nothing you couldn't pull me out of, I'm sure," she teased back. "Icarus was able to fly, after all."

"And crashed back to earth rather spectacularly," he added dourly. "Not exactly a metaphor I'd like to take to its ultimate conclusion."

"Then we should find something else to discuss."

Riker grinned wolfishly and tightened his hands on her back, pulling her flush against him. "I think that's enough discussion for one night."

She looked up into his face, and although she made no move to push him away, the expression on her face was more than a little bemused. "I thought you weren't asking?" she teased. He looked down at her and smiled, tenderly brushing hair from her face.

"Maybe we shouldn't have to ask any more."

A smile touched her lips. "Maybe."

  


*

  



End file.
